Recap: Orphan Black S.4 Ep.1 ‘The Collapse of Nature’

After a year of waiting, Orphan Black is back. New season, new mistery and of course new clone, but probably not only one.

This week, we get to see Tatiana Maslany step into the shoes of one new clone – M.K. and one she hasn’t really explored before. Now, we’ve seen her as Beth Childs, the clone whose committed suicide at the beginning of season one. We never had an opportunity to see Beth story, we knew what Sarah found out after assuming her identity, what Art, Paul, Cosima and Alison have told us, but this was the first time we really got a chance to see Beth’s story.

Creators shows us Beth as a broken woman, driven to solve a murder involving a neolutionist who had his cheek removed. We can see that Beth’s life isn’t a happy, even before she tries to solve the case that probably leads her to suicide. Sarah thought that Beth killed herself because she finds out that her boyfriend, Paul, is her watcher. Beth is a drug addict forced to use a child’s urine to keep from failing a drug test, she is a woman whose boyfriend can barely look at her, and she is a woman who can barely exist without popping a pill or sniffing a line, after this episode we can see she was in even worse shape than we may have realized.

We already knew something about Beth, most of the time in this episode we spent with detective and her partner, but creators introduced us a new clone. She likes animal masks. She’s super paranoid, but not without reason — as she tells Beth, the only reason she’s alive is because they thinks she’s dead.

This week creators focused on Bath, so we had few seconds with Felix, Cosima and Alison. There is also a few seconds of Sara and Kira at the end of the episode. There is no Helena, Mrs. S, Donnie, Rachel or Castor clones.

Except for the last few minutes, this episode is entirely a flashback. At the end, we flash-forward to the present day, where M.K has contacted Art. She’s been in the shadows for a while, but had to warn Sarah that the Neolutionists have found her and she needs to run.

On season four premiere, we could see two new characters created by Tatiana Maslany. Both of them are completely different than any other clone she showed on Orphan Black. Tatiana’s Beth is lost, broken, brave, dedicated to higher causes and completely different than anything she has played before. Tatiana is a master and she can play everything but it’s also brilliant performances from Dylan Bruce as Paul and Kevin Hanchard as Art.

I can’t forget about music, creators always use perfectly matched songs. It’s no difference this time. Music is a background for action and makes scenes complete.

I knew it’ll be back to the beginning of the story, but I didn’t expect something like this. It was good to see some old faces again. We see Paul interacting with Beth. Leekie was back being Freaky Leekie, he saw for the first time Leda clone. We have also seen Angie, Raj, Ramon and Olivier. Some of those characters are dead already, but it’s always good to see familiar faces.

I’m waiting for more episodes, I hope we’ll find out more about M.K. Who is she? Is she the clone which were introduced on comic book’s series Helsinki?